In the first unit of our EDCI 335 course, we took a look at learning, motivation and theory. I took a particular interest into the chapter on “Why is learning so hard?”, specifically the Destin Sandlin video entitled “The Backwards Brain Bicycle”. For those who have not watched the video, in it, one of Destin’s coworkers, who is a welder, constructs a “backwards bicycle”. My first thought when he said a backwards bicycle was a bicycle that you rode backwards instead of forwards, which I am sure would have been an equally entertaining, if not slightly more dangerous. The key takeaway of the video was the concept of neuroplasticity, and the difficulty of relearning how to do a task that is completely opposite to the way we are used to doing things.

Partially due to the fact there was a bicycle, and partially due to the usage of neuroplasticity in the video, it made me reflect on my learning experiences learning how to ski and learning how to mountain bike. So, in this post, I will reflect on my ability to overcome learning challenges when I was learning how to ski compared to learning how to mountain bike.

I started learning how to ski when I was 4 years old, and by the time I was 10 years old, I could almost ski anything on any mountain. Reflecting, it seemed to be the easiest thing in the world learning how to be an expert skier. There were not a ton of moments of total fear, and, relative to the speed I learn now, it seemed to be basically effortless. After watching the video, I could not help but think this was because as a young kid, my brain was extremely neuroplastic. Reorganizing the structure of my brain and creating new pathways to develop my skiing abilities had very little hurdles at this age due to the flexibility of my brain to learn these new skills. It certainly also helped that at that age I had very little risk analysis skills and could not realize when I was putting myself into terrifying and dangerous situations.

Fast forward fifteen years, and when I was twenty years old I started to learn how to mountain bike. A similar sport to skiing, you are spending your time out in the woods, riding on a piece of man-made machinery down a hill. The only difference is you are switching skis for a bike and snow for dirt. I have found my experience learning how to mountain bike to be much more tedious than my experience learning how to ski. I think this is in large part due to the decreased neuroplasticity in my brain when I was four years old compared to twenty years old. I have had to put much more effort into learning how to mountain bike. Without putting much thought into it at the time of learning, I think that I have mostly been employing cognitivism to learn this skill. I have used my athletic skills from other sports I have done and reviewing footage of myself and others biking to get better at this sport. Ultimately, I have loved the process, but have found it much more difficult and scarier than learning how to ski when I was a kid.

To summarize, I had very different learning experiences learning how to ski when I was four years old versus learning how to mountain bike when I was twenty years old. Learning how to ski felt like an effortless procedure, while learning how to bike has had many more setbacks and challenges. I think this is all due to changes in neuroplasticity in my brain between learning the two sports.